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Follow the reluctant adventures in the life of a Welsh astrophysicist sent around the world for some reason, wherein I photograph potatoes and destroy galaxies in the name of science. And don't forget about my website, www.rhysy.net

Saturday, 22 November 2014

I've always thought of feminism as a rather simple thing : the idea that men and women be treated equally. Yet in recent weeks there seems to have been a growing influx of anti-feminist rhetoric flitting about my Google+ stream, and it's time to do something about that. Much like those of the evangelical atheist ilk that treat all religions as morally equivalent to the mass human sacrifices of Aztec Mexico, so certain people seem to think that feminism is an idea that's really quite different to what it actually is.

This is a large, three-part article. It has to be, because this is a complex subject. In this first section I'll look at feminism and why it is - perhaps surprisingly - not actually incompatible with objectifying women; in the second part I'll examine what this means in practise; and in the third part will be a case study of the trigger for this article : shirtstorm.

1) What the heck is this "feminism", anyway ?

There are definitely mixed messages coming from the feminists. That's because feminism is an ideology, not a religion or political movement. Still, sometimes I can sympathise with Principle Skinner :

Don't worry, Seymour, there's an easy way out of this quagmire. In my view, "treated equally" really means with "equal respect". People are individuals and generally want to be treated differently from one another (perhaps less a case of "do unto others as you would have them do unto you", and more a case of "do unto others as they would have you do unto them"*), but no-one wants to be treated like dirt. Everyone want to be valued equally, like-for-like. Treat people as individuals and don't generalise based on their gender - it's that simple.

* Well within reason. Just because someone wants a bribe doesn't entitle them to one.

"Equal respect" directly implies a meritocracy where everyone is allowed to compete equally based solely on ability. All other things being equal, everyone's opinion is equally important. But that's really all it says. It doesn't directly say anything about cheerleading, fashion modelling, the pornography industry, or heck, even the virtues of prostitution as a career choice. Rather what it says is quite simply that if these things are deemed acceptable for one gender, they must also be acceptable for the other. It does not actually say whether or not they are acceptable for any gender in the first place - that's society's choice. Feminism, as some wise individual wrote, is about elevating women, not taking men down.

Incidentally, this doesn't imply that we must demand equal numbers of men and women in the same jobs(though it most certainly does dictate equal pay for the same work). I strongly suspect that when we eventually do establish a society of truly equal respect, this is what will happen, even in careers where men and women are each currently tiny minorities - but I don't actually care about whether we have a precise 50-50 balance in all vocations. It's the opportunity that matters to me, not the end result.

Now, I sincerely hope that anyone reading this will have agreed that equal opportunities and equal pay for men and women are fundamentally Good Things (if we can't agree on that, I don't think we can be friends). It doesn't matter whether you look like Brad Pitt, Scarlett Johansson, or the back end of a bus - or whether you're a raging heterosexual, as gay as Dale Winton or as liberal as Captain Jack Harkness : your success in life should be determined by ability. Nothing else matters, except of course whether or not you treat others with the same amount of respect that they treat you.

Does this mean everyone should be treated in exactly the same way in all situations by everyone else ? Of course not, any more than you would go around assuming that everyone is an expert in neuroscience or has the same passionate hatred of elephants. And that leads us on to the area where so many people, both men and women, seem frightfully confused about feminism : sexuality.

Few people, if any at all, would complain about the following set of images :

Yet people most assuredly do complain about images like these :

Why is that ? Is there anything intrinsically different about the two sets of images beyond the genders displayed ? I would argue "no". I never heard anyone complain that the first images are in any way demeaning or that they treat men like objects for female gratification. Nor does it in any way disturb me that such images exist and that women enjoy them (indeed, certain female friends of mine have described, with consummate tact, the man in the first image as inducing a "lady boner"). Why should it ? Men and women find members of the opposite sex attractive, and as a short, scrawny yet slightly flabby nerd I don't feel in any way diminished by the use of uber-muscular young men as sex objects for women. More on that in part two.

Yet these are precisely the sort of complaints that are made about the second set of images. But it's not the images themselves that makes these complaints valid (for that, we must take a wider view). Image for image, it's extremely difficult, if not impossible, to say whether one is treating one gender more respectfully than the other. Remember, if we're assuming "equality" to mean "equal respect", the actual way in which we treat the genders is not important : the only thing that matters is that if we objectify one gender, we also allow objectification of the other*.

* I suppose in principle "equal respect" could mean "zero respect for both genders", but this trivial to dismiss. No-one wants to live in a world where the only thing that matters is how attractive everyone is... well probably not, anyway.

Now I have to make a very important point before we proceed any further. I am going to use the term "objectify" to mean, "to ignore all other qualities besides physical attractiveness". This is not the same as the way some people use the term, which is more like "to assume that a person has no other qualities besides physical attractiveness". Unfortunately the difference between the two is considered so subtle there isn't even a good alternative English word, but in fact it isn't subtle at all - it's critical. That should become more obvious as we go on, if it isn't already. But please, dear reader, do keep this in mind - otherwise you may think I'm saying something completely different to what I actually mean.

Right, so, do those above images objectify genders ? You betcha. Is this a problem in and of itself ? Arguably, no. Is this a problem in society more generally ? Hell yes - and it's only a problem for women. I'll return to this more in part two, but first I want to say a little bit more about objectification.

People are sexy, deal with it

I don't have a problem with objectification per se. A woman who chooses to objectify herself for male gratification is no more immoral than a man who does the same for women, and nor are men who enjoy objectifying images of women any more immoral than women enjoying those of men. The problems are twofold, and related : 1) the much, much greater extent to which society objectifies women than men; 2) the fact that many men seem to extrapolate wildly from the women in these images that all women exist solely for their own enjoyment. This extrapolation is absurd as saying that because Chris Hadfield can play the guitar, he cannot also be an astronaut. It's as mad as a bag of clams, but that's the world we live in.

Put simply, the objectification of women (partly due to the sheer amount of it) has led many men not to conclude merely that women are attractive (which is all an image of an attractive woman intrinsically says), but to conclude that women are attractive and that's all they are.In fact, reducing one individual to their physical characteristics for the enjoyment of the opposite gender does not, in and of itself, imply that all members of that gender have no other value. It does not mean that the particular person on display has no other value either, only that they have chosen, temporarily, to ignore their other qualities - not eliminate then. They're not toys, for crying out loud.

Speaking of which, a pretty close analogy would be the similarly-decried video games. The notion that video games are a direct cause of violent behaviour is patently absurd. I play (or used to, a lot) Total War games, in which battle casualties can often run into the thousands. I don't know the total number of casualties I've inflicted, but it's certainly in the tens of thousands, probably in the hundreds of thousands, and very possibly in excess of a million. As for more up-close-and-personal games, I haven't the foggiest idea how many people I've immolated, punched, beheaded, riddled with bullets (and in one case with high-velocity gnomes), hacked with a sword, and brutally beaten to death with assorted blunt instruments. These things are fun to do in games because they're not real. They no more induce me to go on an orgy of death and destruction than they make me want to start the world's first floating circus and start wearing a tutu : there is precisely zero correlation here. Zero. Nada. Zilcho.

Similarly, objectification in principle does not lead to sexism (it doesn't when women objectify men, after all). If you can differentiate between the fantasy world of gameplay and reality, you damn well ought to be able to tell the difference between a woman posing for a photograph and the idea that women are somehow subordinate to men. There ought to exist the same vast chasm between enjoying killing thousands in a video game and wanting to massacre people in reality, as between enjoying a photograph of the opposite gender (or indeed any form of adult entertainment) and assuming they're all somehow inferior to you. You ought to possess the modicum of intellect needed to realise that people aren't toys because they chose to dress (or undress) in a certain way - yes, even (especially) when they're deliberately doing it so that you can enjoy them.

You can't tell me that watching elephants trample people to death in a video game isn't fun. You also can't tell me that it is fun in reality. Granted, the analogy isn't perfect - attractive people are, so I'm told, also a lot of fun in reality. But in reality, killing thousands of people isn't fun because peoplearen't toys - exactly the same goes for disrespecting women.

Now one could argue that we shouldn't objectify people at all. A debatable point, certainly, but I don't see this working. If people find the opposite gender attractive, there will always be people willing to exploit that and happy to be exploited by it. For the sake of the extremely important reason of the survival of the species, people generally want the opposite gender to find them attractive. It is simply too small a step, too slippery a slope, from this basic truth to people making money from this.

Moreover - if (note the maximum possible emphasis here) people treat "sexploitation" images in the same way they treat video games (i.e. they don't let them influence their real-world actions), then I fail to see anything immoral here. Far better - and frankly more fun for everyone - to simply demand equal levels of sexploitation of men and women. That could either mean much less objectification of women than at present, or much more of men, or something in between.

In short, objectification (by the definition I'm using) is scarcely intrinsically worse than simply finding someone attractive. Few people could honestly say they'd don't assess someone's physical attractiveness at all if presented with no more than a photograph. No-one thinks, "I must make a detailed inquiry into the personal habits and moral values of this person before judging their attractiveness." No-one. That is nonetheless a form of objectification - a part of human nature, which, like aggression, is only dangerous if not properly controlled.

So that's the theory covered. In summary, people can be hot. Judging them on this, and even ignoring their other qualities, is not damaging in and of itself - women happily do this to men with little harm done. But assuming that they don't actually have any other qualities, to treat them like a toy... this is immensely harmful. This level of objectification is far worse, but as we'll see in the next section, in practise even just ignoring their other values can be seriously degrading if it's allowed to run rampant. We'll also examine the ways in which things are much worse for women, and why when women objectify men this isn't damaging for men.

2) If objectifying people is OK, why can't I catcall random women in the street ?
Because that makes you a massive douchebag and have completely missed the point of what I wrote, that's why. I'm trying to tell you that fancying women is absolutely fine (duh !), and if you want to admire an actress' tits and don't really care about her personality then even that can be OK*, but actually treating them as objects - the most literal sense of "objectification" - is not. Allow me to explain in more detail.

* Sorry, but writing, "physical attributes" became intolerably dull.

We've established that feminism means giving equal amounts of respect to both genders, but doesn't actually say anything about what that level of respect should be. We've also seen that appreciating the physical qualities of the other gender, even while ignoring their other values, is not wrong in and of itself. So why do many people seem to think that it is ?

You'll notice I chose sets of images of both men and women that were as blatantly objectifying as possible. That was a deliberate choice to tackle the moral aspect of objectification head-on. In practise, imagery which deliberately objectifies women is just one aspect of the issue we need to address.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a good example of an outrageously attractive lead actress in a show I don't think anyone in their right mind would describe as anti-feminist (similarly the X-Files). Xena Warrior Princess is an even better example : here we have a woman in a very revealing outfit that would not look out of place alongside the earlier images, yet anyone watching the show would have to be a demented lunatic to think it was anti-feminist - and of course, comic books are littered with similarly attired heroines. Star Trek Voyager's Seven of Nine is an interesting grey area : although brought in quite unashamedly for male viewers to have a nice big pair of boobs to distract from the largely mediocre plotlines, it quickly transpired that both the character and the actress were a lot more capable than most of the others on the show. Irony, thy name is Jeri Ryan.

So feminism and sex appeal are not even remotely mutually exclusive, no matter what the misogynists might say. But even feminist icons, if they're considered attractive, are most certainly objectified by male viewers regardless of what they're wearing or how they conduct themselves. I know I certainly did. And do*. So deliberate objectification at the source is only part of the story. But even when it is deliberate, it is not necessarily an outrageous moral offence. The problem is not women choosing to look classically attractive to men, or even women being objectified, or even men objectifying attractive feminists on TV : it's that women are constantly objectified, and to to a degree that men simply do not suffer from.

* If that seems unpleasant, please remember the definition of "objectify" I'm using.

The ever-wise Robert Minchin puts it thusly :

"The difference is that the relationship is asymmetric. Women are objectified by men in a way that both affects their progress in their careers and can be a physical threat. Men do not suffer this. For example: if a female presenter is called 'sexy', there is an implication that this is why she got the job, rather than her talent; if a male presenter is called 'sexy', this is considered a bonus to his talent rather than taking away from it.﻿"

For a truly outstandingly brazen example, see this clip by the nefarious, shameless Donald Trump (watch the whole thing later, it's good - but for now skip to exactly 5 minutes in) :

Women are objectified far beyond the narrow confines of modelling or adult entertainment. Actresses - especially younger ones - are almost invariably judged on their appearances (fine) at the expense of their abilities (not fine) - for an excellent review, see this. Another recent example is the Russian cosmonaut Yelena Serova - here we have one of the most elite, capable members of society being asked repeatedly about her hair. Why ? She's not a model. Her appearance has no influence on the mission, it's not relevant. And while individual comments on social media that "she's beautiful" might not be damaging (but see below), the fact that so may comments were exclusively of this nature, and showed little interest in her at all - well, that's the heart of the problem right there.

Years of training and they ask her about her hair. No wonder she's pissed.

This habit of ignoring other qualities is almost universal. Asking a cosmonaut about her hair is fine - only asking about her hair is not. Looking good isn't her job - if she wants to, that's her choice, but it shouldn't matter if she's Helen of Troy or one of the Gorgons*, because it's not relevant to what she's doing. Yes, sometimes men are also judged exclusively on their appearance - but not to anything remotely approaching the degree to which it's done to women.

* Minus the snakes. Obviously in this case asking about the "hair" would be entirely legitimate.

A major part of the problem is choice. Women have little choice as to whether men objectify them or not. Some women do chose to objectify themselves in no uncertain terms, and personally I find it anti-feminist when people complain about this. No, they're not "demeaning all women" any more than male underwear models demean all other men. Again, it only requires an iota of intelligence to realise that the actions of one do not represent all.

Others do not seem particularly disturbed by being sometimes objectified, at least in the limited sense that I'm using it here. Yet all too often, as we've seen with GamerGate, it goes far beyond this, and well into the sense of "assuming women have no other qualities" rather than "temporarily ignoring their other qualities". At this point, even "compliments" on appearance become derogatory. It would be bad enough to have one's status reduced to the physical all the freakin' time with one's other qualities merely ignored, but it is far worse if people don't even think you have any other qualities.

A crucial caveat : whether or not people really think women don't have, don't care about, or "merely" ignore their other qualities - if this is done often and consistently enough, the effect is the same. If you ignore intellect all the time, it becomes the same as if you don't think it exists at all. As I said before, feminism doesn't say objectification is always wrong, but it does require equal objectification or none at all - and that is clearly not the world we live in.

It seems that women rarely, if ever, adopt the much more literal form of objectification, nor do they reduce men to their sheer physique anywhere like as frequently as men do with women. This is why male comments on attractiveness are perceived very differently to female comments on attractiveness. Given the wider social context, the implications are very different - even though the intention of both may well be equal. Hence my friend can shamelessly declare, "I liked it when footballers had to change their shirts during a match", but I'd better be rather more careful if I want to comment on the chest quality of the cheerleaders (a job for which there is no male equivalent).

Even if these were morally equivalent - and I don't think they are - their context in society is radically different. Hence one is sometimes perceived to be offensive while the other is not.

That's why my female friends admiring the manly nature of certain public figures doesn't make me feel diminished in any way. The degree to which men are objectified is far less than that experienced by women - they don't carry on the harmless admiration of tremendously manly men and expect me to conform to that stereotype. No pressure is put upon me to do the slightest thing to live up to an unrealistic expectation of masculinity. I can live my life however the hell I like and not be judged for it; they are very much expected and obliged to try and meet certain ideals that exist only to appease male sexuality (but see this).

Feminism not only requires equal levels of objectification, but it also requires the same type of objectification. I suggest that we men adopt the demonstrably superior manner that women have done : they admire certain physiques, they even ignore male personalities on occasion*, but they don't require all men in all professions to meet those standards all the time. This really shouldn't be difficult.* OK, for some men, quite often.

This is of course a huge subject, but I need also to mention one other factor : women as rewards.

Fortunately, there's a well-known and excellent article about this here, so I won't go into details. But it's worth summarising. Wanting a partner because you think they're attractive is fine. Thinking that they somehow owe you something because they're attractive is not. It doesn't matter how nice you are, how much help you give, how courteously you treat them - people are people. They are under no obligation to grant you sexual rewards for your good behaviour. It is entirely their choice as to how they behave, and while there's nothing wrong with trying to woo the, err, object of your affections, there's something very wrong if you think that at some point you've "done enough", or "deserve a reward". Men don't feel the slightest bit obliged to grant sexual favours towards women they're not interested in; why the hell should women ?

And incidentally, when was the last time you saw a movie where an ugly man wins a beautiful woman ? And when was the last time you saw a movie where this was the other way around, hmm ?

Again, people are individuals, free to choose. If some men and women feel they should grant sexual favours under certain conditions, fine - but that in no way obliges anyone else to behave the same way. Stop it with the "friendzone" nonsense already.

The massively greater extent to which men objectify women (both in the lesser and more literal sense) occurs not just in the case of prominent public figures like actors but also occurs in everyday life - which is something that really just doesn't happen to men. As this video demonstrates quite clearly.

Many commentators have made much of the fact that, the two creepy stalkers aside (everyone seems to be against them, at least), what's being said the the lady is ostensibly complimentary. There'a a heck of a lot wrong with that on every level.

There seems to be an odd idea that the analogy for men in this situation would be to have hundreds of beautiful ladies trying to chat them up. Yet this woman isn't in a nightclub flirting with people or even wearing anything the slightest bit provocative. She's walking down the street, fully clothed. In no way has she given the merest hint that she's remotely interested in acquiring a partner, temporary or otherwise. Absolutely no clue is given as to what the woman in this video thinks of her would-be suitors - do you really think she finds them all as attractive as supermodels ? Of course not.

A better analogy might be to have a random mixture of hundreds of different men pursuing our hapless male subject. Men, try mentally replacing the woman with yourself and change nothing else about the video, and see how that works. You really want random dudes shouting, "DAH-MN !" at your ass as you walk by ? Because I sure don't.

Although comments directed towards men and women may be ostensibly the same, they have radically different implications - unfortunately, society treats women differently. As we've seen, compliments on men are usually seen as nothing more than compliments, which enhance their status - compliments on women often degrade them to the status of objects.

If you're the sort of douche who thinks it's OK to shout out, "Nice tits !" to a random woman in the street, it is possible that you meant :

"Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more lovely and more temperate.

Rough winds do shake the darling buds of May,

And summer’s lease hath all too short a date.

Sometime too hot the eye of heaven shines,

And often is his gold complexion dimmed;

And every fair from fair sometime declines,

By chance, or nature’s changing course, untrimmed;

But thy eternal summer shall not fade,

Nor lose possession of that fair thou ow’st,

Nor shall death brag thou wand’rest in his shade,

When in eternal lines to Time thou grow’st.

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee."

Or more colloquially and to the point, perhaps you meant something like : "I have great admiration for your physical attributes and would like to investigate them further, provided that, after suitable discourse, we have established a state of mutual respect. Or, if you are of such leaning - though a priori I have no reason to assume so - that you would wish to skip this stage and commence immediately to the "getting jiggy with it" part of the proceedings, I would also be willing to consider this. I have now made my inclinations clear, and of course it is entirely your choice as to how we proceed."
Even in the insanely unlikely scenario that that's what you meant - do you really think that's how it will be perceived ? Or is it more likely that she'll think, "I am a complete scumbag. I like your boobs, and that's all I'm interested in. I have zero interest in your personality because I see you as a toy for my amusement. As a man, I think my compliments are as precious as unicorn tears and you should be grateful for each and every one. In fact the very gaze of my eye can turn water into wine, my breath smells of roses, and I have the physique of a demigod. If you don't appreciate this, you must be a worthless raving lunatic."

Now, it's very difficult to judge individual comments - men are as individual as women. So you don't really know what a man means from a single comment - he could in principle mean nothing further than remarking on the fine qualities of a lady, just as, as we saw earlier, images of people don't themselves convey any other information. But the wider pattern of behaviour makes it infinitely more likely that he does not, that he is in fact part of this amazingly widespread misogynistic culture.

Finally, those comments which are ostensibly nothing more than, "Hello how are you ?". Sure, that could mean nothing more than, "Hello how are you ?" just as "Nice tits !" can mean nothing more than "Nice tits !". In context, this is ridiculous. Frankly, if I had to endure dozens of people asking me how I was every time I went for a walk, I'd be freaked out. The only time this happens to me is when people are conducting surveys or asking for donations - they're using me, I am being objectified. I know full well that their surface-level question hides their true meaning - I'm not annoyed by the questions, but by what they represent.

Before I move on to the specific case of shirtstorm, a summary. Yes, you can fancy people. Yes, you can ignore their other qualities sometimes, without doing the slightest harm to anyone. What you can't do is automatically assume that all women are perfectly comfortable with this in all situations - and/or to literally objectify people and treat them as toys.

We've now got the tools we need to deal with shirtstorm. The salient points are these :

Feminism is about equality of respect more than it is about equality of behaviours. People are individuals, don't force them to comply with your gender stereotype.

Sex appeal and even sex objects are not incompatible with feminism. Because people are individuals, they can do what they want provided equality of respect is maintained.

Ignoring the intellect of men/women and only caring about their bodies is fine in certain limited circumstances. Women can and do objectify men in this way with no harm done to anyone.

Always (or more often than not) ignoring the intellect of women is as harmful as if you think they haven't got one - you end up treating people like toys.

Men objectify women to a far greater extent, and far more frequently, than women objectify men. This is why some people take every objectifying comment as implying something far more derogatory than the comment itself.

Even if you aren't a misogynist, you need to be aware of what society thinks your comments mean. People may be wrong to be offended by your comments, but they are absolutely right to be offended by what they think your comments imply. The social context cannot be avoided.

3) Case study : shirtstorm
For the sake of those living in a cave, "shirtstorm" is the term for a recent press conference in which Rosetta scientist Dr Matt Taylor (no relation) wore a shirt made up of pictures of scantily-clad young ladies (designed, incidentally by a female friend of his). He also told a sexual joke, though that gets less attention.

I'm going to tackle this one be responding to the various anti-feminism memes which sprang up in response to this. I'm not going to comment on the shirt itself much until after addressing the memes. Let's start with the easiest one.

Meme 1

No idea what Facebook is doing in there. As for Kim Kardashian (sadly not a Cardassian) it's pretty obvious this isn't sexist - this improbably large-buttocked woman chose to reveal herself to the internet. She's perfectly free to do so. There's nothing anti-feminist or sexist about this whatsoever. Yes, it does exploit women (or a woman, at any rate), but as I've been at pains to point out, this isn't anti-feminist in some circumstances - and it ought to be abundantly clear that is is one of those circumstances.

Verdict : This meme is stupid.

Meme 2

Say wha ? Fuck equality and mutual respect ? Err, no, I don't think I will, actually. Leaving the shirt itself aside for the moment, he apologised profusely for offending a huge number of people. These people believed, rightly or wrongly, that he was propagating a highly offensive, demeaning message - it's absolutely right that he apologise. Whether those people were right to be offended, and whether the magnitude of his reply (which really was very emotional), is another matter which we'll return to later.

Verdict : Stupid meme. But was it really warranted to move someone to tears ? I'm not so sure.Meme 3

Ooh, controversy ! Now on face value, I'd have to say Taylor's shirt is massively less offensive than Valenti's. If we look at what they say intrinsically (ignoring just for a moment the wider social context), Taylor's shirt is equivalent to declaring, "I LIKE WOMEN !!!!" in a big, booming, Brian Blessed voice. Valenti's shirt is directly stating that she likes offending men and making them cry - which is clearly much, much worse. To put it another way, if Taylor had worn a shirt that said, "I bathe in female tears", he wouldn't have just been harangued by the internet - he'd have been (rightly) tarred and feathered.

But of course, ignoring the wider social context is daft. Given what feminism is really about, it's highly unlikely that Valenti takes pride in moving any and all men to tears. Not to mention that male dominance is so established that it could damn well use - and can most certainly tolerate - the occasional insult. "Misogynists", however, would have been a much better word than "male".
Remember, male "compliments" sometimes carry very offensive connotations because of this wider culture of demeaning women. By the same token, female insults can also mean something very different from their face value. Assuming for a moment that Valenti is a true feminist (and not some sort of weirdo man-hater) and believes in equality, is it really likely that she means to say, "I want to make every single man cry ?" I think not.

Verdict : I can see where you're coming from, but no. Good try.

Meme 4

Accusations of double standards have been pretty common, but completely miss the point. No-one ever said that women should be able to wear literally anything they liked - they certainly can't go around professing their allegiance to the Klu Klux Klan. Taylor's shirt certainly isn't as hateful as that, but it still conveys (at least to some people) a very damaging message. The intention of the above parade was clearly about sexuality and male treatment of women; Taylor's shirt has those pesky negative connotations in that area - so yeah, it's going to offend people.

To re-iterate, equality of respect doesn't mean the same treatment. Yes, you should damn well be able to wear what you like and not have men treat you like dirt.Yes, a thousand times yes, your clothes aren't your consent - that is a great message. No, you can't go to the office in a bra and not expect men to make sexual advances toward you - that's just plain silly. But men finding you attractive and men treating you like a toy are not - and should not be - the same thing. Not at all.

Verdict : Partial credit. Taylor's shirt has connotations that aren't the same as women themselves choosing to dress like the women pictured on his shirt do not. Yet if women are allowed to dress like that, it does become a bit weird to say men can't wear images of the same thing.

Meme 5

This is part of a longer meme you can read here. Also, I altered the quotationmarks as in the original they use the German style (,, '') which was confusing.

Hmm. My initial reaction was indeed that landing a comet is indeed overwhelmingly more important than the shirt. So it's somewhat ironic that I'm writing all this, although it does also help to have a go-to article about feminism. However, the mainstream media did focus on the comet - it's on social media where the shirtstorm rages. It was right that someone pointed out the negative message implied by the shirt.

As to the second part, this is plain ridiculous. It's not about people who are already in science - it's about inspiring young people who want to go into science. No sane person is going to quit their job because of the shirt - even in the case that they find it offensive, working with people with conflicting views is part of life. Scientists are a tremendously diverse and opinionated bunch. Prior to the shirstorm, Taylor was noted for breaking the mould of boring scientists - a laudable goal, which I believe is extremely important in encouraging more people into science. Many people, however, think a shirt like this is discouraging... although, to my knowledge, no-one has actually gone and asked the young people what they think.

Verdict : Partial credit. I'd like to know more about what wannabe scientists think of this, ideally in a statistical approach. I've seen opinions on both sides, read support messages from both men and women in favour of this (see below for the designer's opinion). Show me the result of a halfway-decent poll from high school and university students, then we'll talk. As I've said previously, anecdotes are not evidence, only the base unit of evidence.
Don't get me wrong, I can certainly see why it might be discouraging. I just want to know if it actually is or not.

That's what the internet thinks, and what I think about what the internet thinks. But what do I think I think I think ?

Ironically, given that I'm writing this, I think the reaction was overblown. It's true that the shirt has negative implications - but it's also true that Taylor is a happily married man and a father of two, and the shirt was designed by a female friend (read that link and also this one) of his. Does this sound like a misogynist to you ? Because it certainly doesn't to me. To reiterate yet again, the objectification of women in certain circumstances does not lead to damaging misogyny or sexism. I further contend that a truly feminist society, where men and women don't have a problem with each other valuing looks (i.e. without values being limited to looks), would not have a problem with Taylor's shirt.

The shirt's designer, Elly Prizeman, had this to say :"There is no ‘meaning’ behind the shirt. I just bought material and sewed it together.Nothing sinister at all was meant behind it at any point. It was just a bold and individual fashion item.""[Pinup imagery] can be construed that way [sexist], I suppose. In its time, yes, but not in the modern day with women being more empowered and accepted in all walks of life. I love the female form, and these pinup prints and pictures are unique and beautiful."
So, a female designer creates a shirt with no intrinsic message beyond "I like women" for a happily married scientist, and the internet enters its usual paroxysm of rage.

This is a very important message. Racists and homophobes are sincerely offended by all kinds of ridiculous things - and more importantly, a century ago it was normal to be a racist homophobe. Without people standing up and saying, "well so fucking what ?" we would have had considerably less social progress in the last century. And yet, just because you're offended doesn't mean you're wrong either. It is indeed no more than a whine : without an explanation as to why you're offended, it's a meaningless statement of your own emotions, totally uncorrelated with whether the subject of your objections is truly right or wrong.

Then again, George Takei had this to say about free speech :"Let me try to clear something up. "Freedom of speech" does not mean you get to say whatever you want without consequences. It simply means the government can't stop you from saying it. It also means OTHERS get to say what THEY think about your words."

The debate between freedom of speech and freedom of consequences has been raging for at least 2,400 years .The whole situation is somewhat messy. About the only thing that's clear is that some people were offended by the shirt, and some people weren't - men and women on both sides. So how do we decided who's right and who's wrong ? Is it possible to judge when someone's offence is in some way more correct than another's enjoyment ?

After 2,400 years, almost certainly not (Robert Minchin has some sensible, practical guidelines though). But it's important to remember what people are being offended by. And so now I'm going to break Godwin's Law in the biggest way possible.

Are you offended by the geometric shape ? Of course you're not. Are you offended by the evil it represents ? You should be - if not, get the hell away from my blog and don't come back - you are not welcome here.

The evidence seems pretty clear to me that Taylor did not intend to convey an image of oppression or anti-feminism (not least because of his heartfelt apology, and the fact the shirt was designed by a woman). Rather it seems that quite unintentionally, he's used an image which represents something very different to what it intrinsically says. What people are being offended by is not (I hope) the idea that men like sexy ladies, but the idea that men only value women for their looks and don't care about their personalities, intellect, or achievements.

So perhaps we can solve this paradox after all. Taylor's shirt isn't demeaning in and of itself, and perhaps it was wrong for the internet to jump down his throat and assume it represented something vile. A few minutes of checking would have revealed that in all probability this man is not a misogynistic creep. At the same time, conditioned responses are pretty powerful - it's not unreasonable that some images carry hugely negative symbolism, and you can't expect people not to lash out.

Assuming that Taylor isn't a misogynist, he was wrong to apologise for the shirt. But he was absolutely right to apologise for the offence it caused people, who assumed (mistakenly, in my opinion) that he was propagating an excluding, demeaning image of women in a professional, scientific environment. Large elements of society are currently not able to deal with the fact that sometimes judging women on their appearance does not mean never judging them on intellect - but there are very, very good reasons for this. So, people of the internet, NO, it's not those "feminists who can't get laid" complaining on twitter that make the shirt a problem - it's that society is nowhere near the level of feminism needed for such images to be acceptable.

Finally, Taylor's effort to avoid the boring scientist image was commendable. But he didn't have to use that particular image - there are plenty of other shirts or jackets he could have worn to look cool without causing the slightest offence. And since outreach is about communicating with as many people as possible, wouldn't that have been better for everyone ?

Saturday, 15 November 2014

If the last post was about scientists behaving inappropriately, then this one is surely the exact opposite. Here's what scientists are supposed to look like. Why every scientist isn't given a lab coat on graduating is something I'll never understand.

Every part of the scientific garb is deeply symbolic. White coats represent scientific purity, while torches remind us that the search for truth can often take us into dark places. Hard hats protect us from the slings and arrows of our less worthy colleagues.

The list of unexpected things I've done in the name of science is getting fairly long at this stage. There was that terrible, terrible dance video, the awful epic poetry, the rather nice epic doodles, the time an imaginary monkey helped me to measure hydrogen, my appearance in the Scottish Sun (while still in Puerto Rico) because my student discovered a galaxy that looks like the Loch Ness Monster, and of course writing The Story of Princess Olivia and the Magical Moose Whose Name No-one Could Quite Remember. Even so, I still think I'm struggling to outdo photographing a potato for NASA... though if things pan out, that one will soon get some satisfying closure. I can say no more.

The Czechs, it must be said, are a very reserved bunch. I doubt anyone would dispute that - when giving talks, it's tough to imagine a greater contrast than between Czech and Anglo-American audiences. But it would be a terrible, terrible mistake to confuse a certain natural caution and generally measured approach with a lack of enthusiasm, sense of humour and fun. Oh no. Far from it.

Our head of department turned 65 recently. A lunchtime discussion briefly considered the notion of a present, before someone suggested we put on some kind of performance.
"What, you mean like, 'Star formation through the medium of interpretative dance ?' ", said I.
"Yes." was the immediate and quite deadpan response.

And that's exactly what we did.

In a few hours we had the basic routine worked out. We'd act out the theory of the formation of a globular cluster. There'd be dry ice (for the interstellar medium), hairdryers and confetti (for the stellar winds), ribbons (because stars form in filaments), flashlights (because, you know, stars shine), costumes (different coloured mantles for different spectral types, hats with equations for black holes and Bonner-Ebert spheres), balloons filled with foil (because stars produce metals) that we'd burst to generate supernovae... in short, it would be a no-singing, all-dancing affair. I was immediately appointed narrator due to my suave and sophisticated British accent, a.k.a. being the token native English speaker.

Despite the truly frightening end result, the Arecibo Anthem genuinely did involve a lot of practise. It had zero props, it's just that none of us were any good at singing or dancing. In contrast, Star Formation Wars had dozens of props, only two practise sessions, and the dry ice turned up not six hours before (like it was supposed to), but 30 minutes. And yet it basically works.

OK, sometimes people missed their cues. My narration has a charismatic delivery that only Ed Milliband could envy. The music track decided to stop working FOR NO REASON !!! about 2 minutes in, and half the time I was too busy watching the participants to bother changing slides (I was also using a camera flash when the supernovae went off - there was a surprising amount of multi-tasking here). Did any of that matter ? Nope.

You probably can't see just how much material was injected into the interstellar medium by the stars and supernovae, but it was a lot. Bits of foil are still appearing randomly all over the institute. Like the drawing of "Dr Rhysy Baby" that's still in my old Cardiff office, I suspect bits of foil will still be turning up long after I've left. I hope so.

Anyway, to return to the picture at the start, the reason we're all dressed like that is because we're all going down a silver mine. The admission fee for Star Formation Wars didn't generate the massive revenue we were hoping for, so the search for funding has become desperate - so desperate that the postdocs have given up applying for grants and are now sent deep into the bowels of the Earth to hack small pieces of silver out of the dirt. Well... not quite. In fact, that's hardly true at all. Actually it's a lie.

Apparently, medieval miners used to wear white cloth because it was cheap. There are medieval depictions of them dressed up like that, although methinks the artist to have been a trifle naive if they really thought those clothes stayed white enough to pass the prestigious Daz Doorstep Challenge for very long. Still, the miners weren't likely to have drawn naked ladies all over their jackets. Presumably.

The pretty town of Kutna Hora is about an hour and a half away from Prague by bus. Back in medieval days it grew fat off the proceeds of its famed silver mines - literally, it was history's first obesity crisis. OK, that's another lie, but it did get stinkin' rich from the silver mines - the deepest of which was called the Donkey Mine and was over 600 metres deep. Amazingly that's not a lie, apparently it was called "Donkey" because that was the owner's name, for some reason. I blame a rather sordid personal history and some very lonely nights.

The tour of the mines is very good, even though you can now only go down to 35 metres. The lower levels are flooded and anyway the rocks contain arsenic (as our guide explained with the black humour typical of the Czechs : "It was good to be a miner's wife. You'd get rich and probably have at least three different husbands"). The mines are narrow, so fun to explore but don't photograph well. All this silver helped pay for two fine cathedrals, and they're more photogenic.

St Barbara's, above, is very much a typical cathedral. I always like visiting them, but they're all basically the same. The other one, with the more grandiose name of the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady and Saint John the Baptist (described as a fine example of "architechtonic heritage" in a translated sign), is in some ways more interesting. The interior having been gutted at some point in its long history, it's been restored... after a fashion. It sort of looks like the mid-stage of a "pimp my church" reality show; a cathedral without any of the trimmings - which is about 90% of what a cathedral needs in order to be... well, a cathedral.

The most interesting bit was going up in the rafters, because they hardly ever let you do that. Suddenly the whole interior made a lot more sense. I have no idea what I was expecting, but somehow it wasn't that.
Anyway, neither the silver mines nor the cathedrals nor the excellent food from the Pavince Dacicky ('c' is pronounced 'ts' in Czech, they tell me) restaurant is why anyone visits Kutna Hora these days. No, it's something altogether stranger - the Sedlec Ossuary, more commonly known as the Bone Church. From the outside it's an unremarkable place.

The interior is another matter entirely. It's just one medium-sized room, but what a room. The great Uzbekistani conqueror Tamerlane, once known as the Scourge of God and the Fear and Terror of the World (now quite forgotten by Western society), was, in his day, famous for not merely razing cities but for so utterly annihilating them that he planted fields of barley in the ruins. His more macabre signature was to also leave behind great towers built of the skulls of the city's former inhabitants. Well, Tamerlane never made it this far, but the ossuary is one place where you can get a very good idea of what said towers may have looked like.

Remember that scene in Return of the King where rivers of skulls burst out of the mountain ? I instantly started to take that a lot more seriously. Most of these bones are apparently from the remains of over 40,000 people buried here who died from plague and wars. Given the number of leg and arm bones on display, a figure of thousands is not implausible.

The room contains four such "pyramids", each about three or four metres high.

Yet the whole place doesn't feel like a house of horrors. It doesn't feel reverential like a tomb, either, it just feels surreal. There's the bone coat of arms, complete with skeletal raven pecking at a skull...

... and, though one hesitates to speculate as to why, little statues of naked children playing trumpets. Best to leave that one well alone.

In any other crypt, hanging strings of skulls from the ceiling like tinsel would be talking point enough, but here they barely register. The designer of this place would probably have laughed in Tamerlane's face, or at least chuckled quietly to himself when safely out of earshot.

If memory serves, legend says that the pyramids were constructed by some half-blind medieval monk, while the more complicated "decorations" were added in the 19th century by a sculptor. Somehow it didn't seem to matter. The whole thing was so arrestingly strange that reading the history of the place would have been like - to borrow a previous observation - using the free wi-fi in a gentlemen's establishment.

Oh, and one more thing. The times, they are a changing, and even places like Sedlec have to stay relevant to our modern, capitalist, consumerist world. Most importantly, they've got to stay interesting to the young people. It isn't enough to have a chandelier made of bones any more, you've got to have something people can really engage with. At least, that's my explanation as to why there's also an alternate version of the ossuary available in Lego form.

Conclusion ? Beneath the cool Czech exterior beats the heart of an artist. An artist with a knife. And a big box of Lego.

Tuesday, 11 November 2014

Six weeks or more without a blog post is long enough that I started to wonder if I'd disappeared. Maybe I'd decided to go off the grid and live the dream of being a reclusive hermit in Antarctica, or something. Imagine my delight when I discovered I hadn't disappeared at all ! I was here the whole time, just not posting anything. Well, that was a relief, I can tell you. Time to remedy this prolonged absence by clearing a backlog of "things I meant to post but just didn't".

July saw a visit to Vienna. Nice place, but too expensive. Difficult to find anywhere you could get a decent meal for less than €30 (yes, the European Union is still calling its currency "Euros" despite the fact I told them not to). Vienna also scores poorly as having one of the most outrageously expensive conference dinners of all time. For €65 (!) we got a tasteless meal on top of a hill. Sure, it was a nice hill, but the food was basically reconstituted cardboard.

Vienna from above is OK, but it ain't Prague.

The city itself is rather better. The Stephansdom cathedral is certainly impressive. It's taller than Prague's St Vitus and less crowded. It's also got a roof. Admittedly, most cathedrals have roofs, but not usually anything worth mentioning.

In fact it must be acknowledged that Vienna is a far nicer place from the ground.

As usual I went without doing a single piece of research into the city, on the grounds that surprises generally make everything much better, About the only famous building I was aware of beforehand was the Schonbruun Palace. I'm sure this is a interesting place if you have a) decent footwear and b) sunglasses. I had neither. Seriously, the grounds were designed by Bloody Stupid Johnson. In summer sunlight I found it physically impossible (actually painful) to even see anything, on account of the blinding white gravel arena stretching maybe six thousand miles in all directions. Only after trudging on my blistered feet across the burning wasteland into the shade of a hedge was I able to realize that in fact, it was quite a nice palace I'd been standing next to.

I therefore conclude that the Hapsburg Emperors wore dark glasses at all times, something sadly lacking in portraits. The palace also has 1400 rooms, mostly for sitting down in and looking at portraits. This made the tour's claims that the Emperor Josef lived a modest lifestyle somewhat... stretched ? Yeah, that'd be the one. You can't say the grounds aren't nice though, because they are.

Some of the statues in Vienna are also worth mentioning, because they were clearly designed by the time-honoured method of pick-and-mix. I can't think of any other reason you'd want a ten-foot tall statue of a legless Roman with shields for arms and a plant for a head.

The animals are even better, for instance, the mer-horse must surely be the most unfortunate creature that never existed. The head and forelegs of a horse... with the tail of a fish. It could neither swim very well, on account of its great clunky legs, nor walk on land any better than an overgrown mudskipper.

The unfortunate rider of this unfortunate beast also has fins for feet, unfortunately.

Then of course there was a creature I immediately christened the porno-sphinx, for obvious reasons.

One more statue must be mentioned. I cannot think of a witty retort that's funnier than the statue itself, so I won't bother writing one.

The best bit about Vienna were the tombs of said Hapsburgs. It's not quite Tutankahmun, but they were certainly in the running for "most epic coffin", and they easily take the "most gothic" title. Apparently there was simply no-one to tell them basic things like, "no, you can't have a coffin large enough to hold a dinner party in, that's a bloody waste of money, you twit". So the coffins start small enough - ostentatious, certainly, but not remarkably so...

... then they get more ornate...

Yes, the pedestals are armoured skulls.

... and then they get enormous.

Believe me, this is bigger than it looks. You could easily seat at least four people inside it.

The Prater funfair provided a less morbid diversion. Vienna may be chock-full of sophisticated cultural icons, and this is definitely not one of them. It is as tacky a place as you'll find anywhere. Rides are disguised as giant plastic snakes. Some of the buildings are adorned with what are probably the least scary-looking monsters since Sesame Street. I loved it, but by this point, I was beginning to wonder if Vienna's reputation as the beating cultural heart of Europe was really all that well-deserved.

Some of the rides were pretty good though. The highlight was definitely this impressively-tall spinning tower. Not quite as tall as the Arecibo platform, but then, the maximum rotation speed of the Arecibo platform cannot reasonably be measured in rotations per minute, let alone rotations per second.

Obviously I didn't take any photos from the top - I'd probably have killed some unfortunate tourist far below, and worse lost my camera - but later a Ferris wheel provided a similar view at a more leisurely pace.

Somehow I always find it particularly amusing being with other scientists in unexpected locations like this (especially more senior, well-known ones who shall remain nameless). I guess it's largely a case of having endured reading their incredibly dry and uninteresting papers* and discovering that they're a diverse and largely affable bunch. Some more than others, of course... some will discuss complex technical details late into the night while others can be found... indulging themselves. But for more on scientists behaving unexpectedly, as well as a tourist attraction that makes the Habsburg's coffins look positively sane, tune in next time. Unless the next time is a science post, which it might be, in which case tune in the time after that.

* This, as readers will by now be aware, is largely a product of the godforsaken reviewers more than the authors.